Journal of Scientific Research and Development 2 (2): 129-133, 2015
Available online at www.jsrad.org
ISSN 1115-7569
© 2015 JSRAD
The relation between truth and tragedy according to plato
Saeed Shapoori 1, *, Hasan Bolkhari Ghahi 2, Esmail BaniArdalan 3
1PhD
Candidate, Department of Philosophy of Art, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2Associate Professor of University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3Associate Professor of Art, College of Cinema and Theatre Studies, University of Art
Abstract: Despite the highly privileged status of Truth in the philosophical ideas of Plato, he has not expressed
anything about during the Socratic and elderly period of his life. He has started the serious discussions on Truth
during his maturity when he claims that Senses deceive, while philosophers seek truth and knowledge: “when does
the soul attain to truth? For when it trie s to consider anything in company with the body, it is evidently deceived by
it.” (Phaedo, 65). In contrast, Plato as early the Socratic period discusses tragic poetry as a “stately and wonderful”
art that is “pleasant and gratifying” for the spectator (Gorgias, 502). This temporal distance between the discussions
reflects the importance of each idea in different periods of Plato’s life. During his Socratic and elderly period, he
considers poetry and tragedy writing as a form “divine power” (Ion, 533) and “divine madness” (Phaedrus, 245),
who “with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth” (Laws, Book 3, 682). The same Plato at the age of
maturity, when obsessed with the concept of Truth, claims that the tragedy maker and the poet is three stages away
from Truth (Republic, Book 10, 597) and “knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance” (Republic, Book 10,
601) and consequently, his art has no relation to Truth. Despite Plato’s specific objections to tragedy in his later
works, a collection of different attitudes toward the relation between tragedy and truth in different periods of his
works reveal the fact that it is impossible to find a unified and clear expression of the relation between tragedy and
truth in Plato.
Key words: Plato; Truth; Tragedy; Poetry; Mimetic poetry; Mimetic art
1. Introduction
*The task of educating the Greek was usually done
by the poets. “The Greeks always felt that a poet was
in the broadest and deepest sense the educator of his
people.” The politicians and law makers handed
them in this task. Poetry was the language of culture
and education, and the emergence of philosophy in
the guise of poetry happened because of the mastery
of poetry over the mind, reason and feelings of the
Greeks. It is against this background that Plato
defined poetry and in particular tragic poetry as a
rival to philosophy and struggles to determine the
nature of education and decide on the relation
between tragedy and truth.
A limited number of studies have been done on
“the question of tragedy” as well as “the relation
between tragedy and Truth” in the works of Plato.
Therefore this study aims to investigate the works of
Plato to find out a clear answer to the question; it
was Plato who recommended such an approach as
“to be learned and sought for, not from names but
much better through themselves than through
names” (Cratylus, 439); therefore, the best way to
find the relation between tragedy and Truth in in the
very dialogues of Plato.
The Relation between Truth and Tragedy in
Platonic Dialogues
*
Correspondin g Au thor.
129
The works of Plato are usually divided into four
periods of “Socratic”, “transitional”, “maturity” and
“old age” (Copleston, 1961, pp. 138 – 140). In the
first part, where he is under direct influence of
Socrates, covers nothing about Truth. The most
important expression of the idea of Truth begins in
Phaedo where he declares “when does the soul attain
to truth? For when it tries to consider anything in
company with the body, it is evidently deceived by
it.” (Phaedo, 65). He continues to argue that “I was
afraid my soul would be blinded if I looked at things
with my eyes and tried to grasp them with any of my
senses. So I thought I must have recourse to
conceptions and examine in them the truth of
realities.” (Phaedo, 99). Therefore, the senses cannot
provide Truth. The only method to find the truth is
dialectics: “if I could, I would show you, no longer an
image and symbol of my meaning, but the very truth,
as it appears to me… nothing less than the power of
dialectics could reveal this” (Republic, Book 7, 533).
Plato sets “set dialectics above all other studies to
be as it were the coping-stone—and that no other
higher kind of study could rightly be placed above it”
(Republic, Book 7, 534). Dialectics can be
comprehended in two meanings, first as an spiritual
journey in the form of an internal dialogue with the
soul, through which the person passes the sensory
world of appearances and attains a higher world of
true, eternal and immortal reality; and, second as a
method in discussion and argumentation where the
Shapoori et al / Journal of Scientific Research and Development, 2 (2) 2015, Pages: 129-133
person who has passed the spiritual journey engages
with others and reveals the inaccuracies,
contradictions, fallacies and contradictions around
them. According to Plato, there are four introductory
sciences for dialectics: mathematics, (Republic, Book
7, 525-526); geometry (Republic, Book 7, 527);
surface geometry (Republic, Book 7, 527) and
astronomy (Republic, Book 7, 528); however, being
“experts in these matters” does not necessarily mean
a person to be a dialectician (Republic, Book 7, 531de). In order to show who is after Truth and dialectics,
Plato distinguishes between three types of persons:
“the philosopher or lover of wisdom, the lover of
victory and the lover of gain”, each one
recommending his way of life (Republic, Book 9,
581c), the lover of gain is after money and the lover
of victory is after his ambitions and it is only the
lover of wisdom who is after Truth and
understanding. These three personalities disagree
over the meaning of pleasure and quality of life
(Republic, Book 9, 581c). “Corresponding to the three
types in the city, the soul also is tripartite… The
three parts have also, it appears to me, three kinds of
pleasure, one peculiar to each, and similarly three
appetites and controls.” (Republic, Book 9, 580d).
Thus, Plato places three forms of pleasure against
three parts of the soul. Pleasure of wisdom is placed
beside the highest part of the soul, the head; the
pleasure of victory and control is equal to the middle
part, the heart and pleasure of profit corresponds to
the lowest part of the soul, the abdomen. The highest
form of pleasure is the pure and true form of
pleasure and other forms of pleasure are phantom of
pleasure. Plato extends this definition of pleasure to
the city and society and finds a close relation
between the high pleasures of philosophers and
moderate people with law and order and a certain
proximity with true pleasure. On the other hand, he
finds “that which is furthest removed from
philosophy and reason… [is] furthest removed from
reason… [and] is furthest from law and order”.
(Republic, Book 9, 587). This is the way Plato argues
how “three times three, then, by numerical measure
is the interval that separates the tyrant from true
pleasure” and how the inferior part of the soul is
three stages away from truth.
Finding corresponding relations between three
parts of the soul and the city makes it possible for
Plato to extend the analogy to every sphere including
literature and art, and particularly investigate on
mimetic art of tragedy as an important component in
education of Greek citizens. According to Plato there
are two forms of mimetic art: one form is used for
making of tools and accessories such as painting and
the other form is used for creating a mimetic image
by employing the body as an instrument. “When
anyone, by employing his own person as his
instrument, makes his own figure or voice seem
similar to yours, that kind of fantastic art is called
mimetic” (Sophist, 267). Mimetic poets, including
tragedy writers cannot distinguish good things from
the bad (Laws, 801); tragedy writers use an obscure
language (Republic, Book 3, 413); they are imitators
(Republic, Book 10, 597) and they are creators of
“the phantom, the imitator, [who] knows nothing of
the reality but only the appearance.” (Republic, Book
10, 601). Therefore, “hat the imitator knows nothing
worth mentioning of the things he imitates, but that
imitation is a form of play, not to be taken seriously,
and that those who attempt tragic poetry, whether in
iambics or heroic verse, are all altogether imitators.”
(Republic, Book 10, 602). For Plato, mimetic and
tragic poetry “seems to be a corruption of the mind
of all listeners who do not possess, as an antidote,
knowledge of its real nature.” (Republic, Book 10,
595).
Such a stance makes Plato to sacrifice his respect
toward Homer against his love of Truth and through
arguing that the coach in poetry is three stages away
from reality (Republic, Book 10, 597) he declares
that “the producer of the product three removes
from nature you call the imitator…. This, then, will
apply to the maker of tragedies also, if he is an
imitator and is in his nature three removes from the
king and the truth, as are all other imitators”
(Republic, Book 10, 597).
For Plato poetry has real effects on the youth and
guardians of the city and considers it as a challenge
to true education of the people, as mimetic the poet
cultivates the low desires and “and by strengthening
it tends to destroy the rational part, just as when in a
state one puts bad men in power and turns the city
over to them and ruins the better sort” (Republic,
Book 10, 605). Such a poet “sets up in each
individual soul a vicious constitution by fashioning
phantoms far removed from reality, and by currying
favor with the senseless element.” Despite this, Plato
admits that the mimetic art of poetry (both in
tragedy and comedy) has considerably strong effect
on the audience, and since this it has a magical
power, it may harm the noble people who love law
and order and only a few are not affected by this
(Republic, Book 10, 605).
It is clear that the first arguments of Plato on the
relation between tragedy and truth are formed
around the distance between sensory perception and
reality. He attempts to clarify how man can attain
truth and how is he distracted and mislead. The
starting point of this discussion is in Republics where
the role of poetry and narration in education are
introduced: historic and fictional narration is the
instruments of education of human soul; albeit “tales
are of two species, the one true and the other false”
(Republic, Book 2, 376). This is the very point where
relation between truth and poetry and narration and
ultimately between truth and tragic poetry is
defined. Plato declares that tales are telling lies and
they may contain some germs of truth. Therefore, he
considers the expressions of Homer, Aeschylus and
other poets about deceitful gods as a lie and “when
anyone says that sort of thing about the gods, we
shall be wroth with him, we will refuse him a chorus,
neither will we allow teachers to use him for the
education of the young” (Republic, Book 2, 383).
Beside poetry and tragedy, such topics as art,
building, technology and beauty are introduced in
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the works of Plato; all of which have direct and
precise associations with the concept of truth. His
definition of art is such that in a sense, every human
being can make everything like an artist. The
simplest way of doing this is “if you should choose to
take a mirror and carry it about everywhere. You
will speedily produce the sun and all the things in
the sky, and speedily the earth and yourself and the
other animals and implements and plants and all the
objects… the appearance of them, but not the reality
and the truth…. the painter too belongs to this class
of producers” (Republic, Book 10, 596). If it is true
that the painter creates another coach, but “his
creations are not real and true”. Therefore, there a
difference between making a real coach and an
appearing one. Real making requires an idea and a
model but painting is not based on true knowledge
and wisdom. It is like holding a mirror against all
manifestations of nature and even man. “The painter
too belongs to this class of producers…[but] his
creations are not real and true” (Republic, Book 10,
596). Making something is different with painting it
and require true knowledge. Painting does not
require knowledge is like a holding a mirror against
all manifestations of nature and man. The craftsman
who makes this and that specific coach, does not
create the truth of coach (or idea of coach) but a
coach that resembles the true coach. Therefore the
product of carpenter or any other craftsman is not
equal to truth (Republic, Book 10, 597). Thant is why
imitators can create anything very much like those
who take a mirror, and those how are away from
true knowledge , when they see such imitations and
the imitators, they are easily deceived and think
they are confronted with masters of knowledge and
wisdom who know all the mysteries of universe.
Thus Plato criticizes the poetic basis of education
and with the guide of Socrates leaves tragic poetry
and instead turns to philosophical education: “when
he was about to compete for the prize with a tragedy,
he listened to Socrates in front of the theatre of
Dionysus, and then consigned his poems to the
flames” (Diogenes Laërtius, Book 3, Chapter 1),
hoping the people or at least the youth to turn from
tragedy and start their quest for the truth. However,
he openly talks about the painstaking task of
achieving a dialectical knowledge. He has seen only a
few mathematicians who could practice dialectics,
including Theatetues who after long periods of
mathematical practices and experiences in explored
dialectical contradictions and was attracted to
philosophical knowledge (Theatetus, 186). But
practice and experience does not lead a person to
become a poet or tragedy writer and “that what they
composed they composed not by wisdom, but by
nature” (Apology, 22). “Being divinely inspired in its
chanting, the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and
Muses, often grasps the truth of history” (Laws, Book
3, 682).
When introducing the ranking of the souls who
can see the truth, Plato places “a poet or some other
imitative artist” in the sixth level (Phaedrus 248).
The tragedy writers are ranked in the same stage as
the poets, because they are both imitators as well as
divine frenzies. When taking about the properties of
being a divine frenzy, Plato distinguishes between
two forms of frenzy: “one arising from human
diseases, and the other from a divine release from
the customary habits” (Phaedrus 265). Gods are
favoring their true followers which are manifested as
madness. “We made four divisions of the divine
madness, ascribing them to four gods, saying that
prophecy was inspired by Apollo, the mystic
madness by Dionysus, the poetic by the Muses, and
the madness of love, inspired by Aphrodite and Eros”
(Phaedrus 265). Therefore, despite the harsh attack
on poetry in book 10 of Republic, there are clear
instances when Plato seriously considers a divine
aspect for the poets and tragedy writers.
While Plato was silent about truth in his Socratic
period, still he had many expressions about poetry
and tragedy like: “soothsayers and prophets and all
of the poetic turn; and especially we can say of the
statesmen that they are divine and enraptured”
(Meno, 99); and continues this by stating that “being
inspired and possessed of God when they succeed in
speaking many great things, while knowing nought
of what they say” (Meno, 99). “It is God himself who
speaks and addresses us through them” (Ion, 534).
He explores in poetry and the genres used in
Homeric and rhapsodic poetry, talks about “divine
dispensation” and “divine influence”. This madness
first happens in the poet, then in the narrator and
finally reaches to the audience (Ion, 533-4; Phaedrus,
245).
According to Pappas, “Plato says nothing about
divine madness in the Republic, probably because it
threatens to elevate poetry to a more exalted level
than the Republic’s ungenerous criticism will permit.
But without some such explanation of their charm,
the danger inherent in works of art must also go
unexplained.” He continues, “given their epistemic
worthlessness, they can seduce their audience only
by virtue of their charm. Either Plato must explain
the bewitchment of art in terms that do not praise it,
or he must concede that such error-riddled
productions could never corrupt the soul.” (Papppas,
2003, 135) Therefore, in both transitional and
maturity periods of his works, Plato harshly attacks
poets and poetry, even criticizes Homer. It is true
that Homer “appears to have been the first teacher
and beginner of all these beauties of tragedy” but
“we must not honor a man above truth” (Republic,
Book 10, 595). Finding the best education in
philosophy, Plato attempts to confront poetry and
tragedy, and when thousands of people asked for
consideration of epic, lyric, tragic and comic works of
the poets as educational materials for the youth, who
should read and memorize these works, Plato raises
objections and calls the wide range of exposure of
children to poetry as “dangerous” (Laws, Book 7, 810
– 811). According to Plato, tragedy “bent rather upon
pleasure and the gratification of the spectators” it
can be considered as “is a kind of public speaking”
(Gorgias, 502). Since both poetry and tragedy
impress the people through the senses, Plato fiercely
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challenges them in different occasions throughout
his works.
Plato refers to Pan, the Greek deity and the son of
Hermes; Pan means all and “You know that speech
makes all things (πᾶν) known and always makes
them circulate and move about, and is twofold, true
and false… the true part is smooth and divine and
dwells aloft among the gods, but falsehood dwells
below among common men, is rough and like the
tragic goat; for tales and falsehoods are most at
home there, in the tragic life” (Cratylus, 408). Here
Plato attempts to define tragedy as proponent of
falsehood, very much like his earlier attempt to
define oratory as deceptive. He refers to changing
and moving nature of both oratorical speech and
tragic poetry to show them as capricious and
impulsive. If in oratorical speeches the changes
happen only in words, in tragedy the changes are
visual and perceptual. Both changes in words and in
bodies are for affecting the senses of the audience.
Therefore, Plato rejects both oratorical speech and
tragic poetry as they misleads men from truth; the
true value of a speech both in the information it gives
us and in the education it provides, resides in its
adherence to truth.
On the other hand, Plato defines poetry and
tragedy as a product of divine madness and frenzy.
As a religious philosopher he tries to show the
defects of poetry and tragedy, and at the same time
wonders if poetry is a divine art. It seems that the
religious Plato is in a deep conflict with Plato the
philosopher. He wonders how to deal with poetry. If
he defines poetry as totally false and untrue, what
should he do with existing definitions that call
poetry as a form of divine inspiration; if he defines
poetry and tragedy the a divine endowment, how
should he deal with poems and tragedies he sees as
harming the people’s souls and how should he define
their relation to truth.
As Greek epic poetry is based on exaggerated lies
and as tragedy brings the same images on the stage,
Plato bans the inhabitants and citizens of his ideal
city from tragedy; tragedy writers, very much like
painters and sculptors are three stages away from
reality.
True philosophers follow truth, while tragedies
on Dionysus festivals depict only lies or speeches far
from reality. Therefore there are true philosophers
and false philosophers. The first group only attempt
to know the truth behind appearances while the
false philosophers of the second group are cast away
from truth and would like to follow the chorus group
in tragedy (Republic, Book 3, 413) and their lower
part of the soul is certainly affected by this.
Although the mimetic and tragic poetry as the
manifestation of divine madness is harshly attacked
in Republic and some other works but in Laws which
is the last dialogue, the concept of truth is strictly
avoided and poetry is dealt with respect: “For being
divinely inspired in its chanting, the poetic tribe,
with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the
truth of history.” (Laws, Book 3, 682). Even Homer is
called a divinely inspired poet again.
Clearly there are differences in Plato’s definition
of poetry and tragedy in his four periods of work. In
maturity treatises, specifically in Republic, changes
his position when considering the value of poetry
according to its impact on action or its effect on
knowledge. In Book 2 of Republic, he has a softer
tone toward poetry and does not deny its total value
but calls for a change in some elements in poetry
that are not compatible with his philosophical
stance. But his second judgment appear in Book 10
of Republic where he calls tragedy and poetry as an
image of an image and thus three stages removed
from reality. However, Plato believes that if poetry
could defend itself on a rational basis and if the
followers of poetic vision could defend poetry in
simple prose, and show it as useful to society, it is
possible for poetry to return from exile for the
benefit of the society (Republic, Book 10, 607-8). This
clearly manifests his attempt to bridge tragedy and
truth through finding a middle way for using the
potentials of both.
2. Conclusion
As the above review of the works of Plato shows,
when he wants to discuss the relation between
tragedy and truth, he starts by justifying his
opposition to poetry. Despite his belief about the
ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, he
praises the attractive and effective elements that are
lied in poetry; yet he strongly warns against
sacrificing the truth obtained through dialectical
philosophy against simple poetry (Republic, Book 10,
607). Despite this, both in his Socratic and maturity
periods, especially in Laws, he avoid to talk about
truth and refers to poets and tragedy writers are
those who are under the influence of gods and divine
madness (Laws, Book 3, 682) whose poetic or tragic
works are the result of this influence.
The overall review of Plato’s treatises indicate his
different attempts to define the relation between
tragedy and truth in favor of the latter, but it is not
possible to find a single idea about this relation and
generalize it as his point of view.
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